with 26 days to go until the country falls over the fiscal cliff, are we seeing some shift in the gop opposition to the president's plan? the president spoke with house speaker john boehner by phone yesterday. it was their first conversation in a week but neither side would characterize that conversation. they agreed not to talk about it publicly. there is this, though, on the front page of today's "washington post." many gop centrists and some conservatives are calling on house speaker john boehner to concede on rates now while he still has leverage and shows concern. ed, as we dive in on this post article, it goes down to points out the republicans do want something in return for this. they want to have some wins in this fight. perception is reality in washington, d.c. and across the land. so if they can give something that looks like, okay, we got a couple things out of this. but that's really not going to be the case when we look at the whole big picture, unless they do that two step, which is get the 98% out of the way and maybe fight over the next eight weeks before the debt cei